Decomposition analysis: Carbon emissions in China’s transportation sector

Abstract

In order to deal with global warming and control carbon emissions, it is of great importance to identify the factors and their impact on the growth of carbon emission in the transportation sector. In this paper, the situation of carbon emissions in China’s transportation sector during 1996-2013 has been discussed and the decomposition analysis has been carried out by using the generalized Fisher index (GFI) method. It is found that: (i) Economic growth, energy intensity, population size and transportation intensity have positive effect on the growth of carbon emissions. (ii) Output value of per unit traffic turnover and energy structure have negative effects, among them, the former is the primary factor and the latter has an unobvious inhibition effect. We put forward suggestions to develop low-carbon transportation in China including to encourage people to adopt new energy vehicles in the passenger transport area, to utilize new energy vehicles in road freight and new energy ships in water freight, to encourage public and shared transportation, and promote the infrastructure construction of national multimodal transport.